Various forms of gas discharge displays have been developed over the years. These gas discharge displays may have a single glass or ceramic plate having a matrix of holes provided therethrough as taught by Kupsky in U.S. Pat. No. 3,743,879. In the display taught by Kupsky, a solid lower electrode is disposed at one end of the holes while an annular upper electrode is circumscribes each of the holes. The holes are filled with an ionizable gas which produces a glow discharge when a sufficiently high voltage gradient is provided between the lower and upper electrodes. Yasud, et al in U.S. Pat. No. 3,983,445 teach a gas discharge display in which has an upper insulator plate having an array of through holes. The upper annular electrodes are provided at the lower surface of the insulator plate and the lower electrodes are disposed a small distance below the upper electrodes. The glow discharge is generated in a common region below the insulator plate.
The problems associated with these displays is that the upper and lower electrodes are relatively thin vacuum coated layers on glass or ceramic substrates. These thin electrodes have limited electrical current carrying capacity and may be readily damaged by the currents encountered during the gas discharge. The invention overcomes this limitation by using copper clad printed circuit boards having increased current carrying capacity.